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What comes after nm and what will the future of processors be?

Gtiracer

Gtiracer

Gtiracer

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Ok so the sizes that the processor manufacturers are working at are getting smaller and smaller, but what happens when we get to 0nm?, which by the looks of things, wont be far off judging by the rate that intel are churning out processors at smaller and smaller sizes.

Any ideas?
 
well the next SI unit is the picometre :)

Gtiracer said:
what happens when we get to 0nm
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haha! there will never be a 0nm processor becuase 0nm = 0m = 0 elephants (when it becomes 0, it does not exist) :p

when we get down to, for instance, 0.5nm, that is the equivilant of 500pm and then we can start going down again e.g. 45 picometers, 32 picometers, 22 picometers :)
 
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panyan said:
well the next SI unit is the picometre :)



haha! there will never be a 0nm processor becuase 0nm = 0m = 0 elephants (when it becomes 0, it does not exist) :p

when we get down to, for instance, 0.5nm, that is the equivilant of 500pm and then we can start going down again e.g. 45 picometers, 32 picometers, 22 picometers :)
Click to expand...


I know I was jsut trying to emphasise that you can only go as small as zero and then what happens? But thank you for your answer, do you think they will go down that route though? Or just start making 6nm or whatever more efficient/powerful etc in different ways / new architectures
 
Although manufacturing at those levels is going to be difficult due to the wavelength of UV being rather too large, i.e. 10nm. So a completely different process will be needed I believe, although I assume that I'm horrifyingly wrong... as usual.
 
An atom is 0.1 nm or larger by the way - and you can't make a transistor with one atom - so we can't just keep shrinking and shrinking down to 22 pm, for example. Something completely new will be needed in the near future.
 
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panyan said:
well the next SI unit is the picometre :)



haha! there will never be a 0nm processor becuase 0nm = 0m = 0 elephants (when it becomes 0, it does not exist) :p

when we get down to, for instance, 0.5nm, that is the equivilant of 500pm and then we can start going down again e.g. 45 picometers, 32 picometers, 22 picometers :)
Click to expand...

But aren't we approaching atom size at those numbers.

May aswell start talking about quarks lol
 
Gtiracer said:
I know I was jsut trying to emphasise that you can only go as small as zero and then what happens?
Click to expand...

Sorry, I don't know what you mean. You can't go down to zero as there wouldn't be anything there. You can go down to infinitesimally small - technically down to the size of a few silicon atoms - but before we get to that point the manufacturers will have big issues with lithography and leakage current to solve.

It's going to be interesting how Moore's law will either be extended and followed or done away with in the next few years.
 
DragonQ said:
An atom is 0.1 nm or larger by the way - and you can't make a transistor with one atom - so we can't just keep shrinking and shrinking down to 22 pm, for example. Something completely new will be needed in the near future.
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isnt that what quantum coomputing is though? using a single atom as a triansistor? or do i need to brush up on my quantum compooting? :p

EDIT: ive just had a look on ye olde wikipedia:
Diameter range: 62 pm (He) to 520 pm (Cs)
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so we can go down into the picometers until we get to these values :)


EDIT 2: ive just had a look and the radius of a silicone atom is 111pm which means that we can go down to 222pm die size before we need a new material to make chips from
 
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No, quantum computing isn't using a single atom as a transistor. It's to do with quantum states and is many, many years off (if it happens at all).

You can't just say that a silicon atom is 111 pm so you can have a 222 pm CMOS process. A single atom cannot be used as a transistor. Conventional technology can't get anywhere near that size.
 
cmndr_andi said:
Sorry, I don't know what you mean. You can't go down to zero as there wouldn't be anything there.
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You don't need to take what Im saying literally, I know 0 means nothing, its not hard to work that out really. What im saying is nothing is smaller than 0 therefore there has to be a point where something changes, but where is that point?
 
Gtiracer said:
You don't need to take what Im saying literally, I know 0 means nothing, its not hard to work that out really. What im saying is nothing is smaller than 0 therefore there has to be a point where something changes, but where is that point?
Click to expand...

i imagine it will be down to marketing rather than science which will decide when they start calling it picometres :p
 
There are other engineering and physics issues at hand other than atom size and our ability to photoresist the substrate - the smaller the gate distance on the transistors, the larger the chance of quantum effects such as electron tunneling become and the circuits cease to function as would be expected. This is one of the many reasons Intel have been working on other techs other than transistor shrinking (introducing the hafnium doping, '3D' FINFETS etc).
 
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